Extravagant launches may be a thing of the past, says Edel Morgan

TRY NOT TO turn green with envy but among the most exciting invitations I've received in recent weeks was one to a chip pan fire demonstration at the Dublin Fire Brigade training centre and another to watch concrete being polished "live" in the RDS.

If any other proof was needed that the recession has taken hold it's that the glamour quotient of the invites seems to have waned in parallel to the economy. Budgets are at the forefront of everyone's minds and with many property-related companies in trouble, or gone to the wall, it's far too serious a time to be indulging in extravagance and frivolity. The time has arrived when a company can ask you to attend a live demo of concrete being polished - with neither a canape nor a crudité on offer - knowing that you might just be grateful to receive an invitation, any invitation.

Time was when I'd arrive into work and there'd be a couple of envelopes on my desk so rigid you could graze yourself opening them, invites to celeb-studded property launches in the Ice Bar (admittedly the aforementioned celebs were usually at least W-list) or cocktail parties thrown by overseas property companies looking for publicity.

At the height of the madness helicopter rides were laid on to visit new homes developments whereupon a brass band, juggler or dance troupe might well appear to greet journalists on the front lawn of the showhouse. At one southside launch the entire Macnas theatre company showed up to entertain us.

Of course the more organisation required, the more potential there was for things to go wrong. At one launch in Wicklow at the height of the boom there was much consternation, not to mention indignation, when a helicopter couldn't land in the grounds of the development and journalists were forced to alight in a neighbouring field only to be assisted over a barbed wire fence by the developers' staff.

These days trudging to a development from a neighbouring field would be a small price to pay if there was any kind of transport on offer. In the old days a recent invite to the opening of Engel & Volkers new office in Kinsale on October 23rd would probably have been accompanied by the offer of some form of transport. In these straightened times, it's a case of on yer bike.

There was a frenzied period when many journalists survived on the canape diet and with a pile-up of functions to choose from on any given night, they thought nothing of floating from one party to the next (it was never cool to stay at one all night) on a tide of champagne.

If you were spotted or photographed at too many you got branded a ligger, the type who would turn up to the opening of a door (if there was a cocktail bar attached to it). I never reached that stage because my time on the scene came to an abrupt end when I had children. The last lavish do I attended was late last year when a property developer launched an upmarket development in Malahide with €500 leather bound brochures with champagne served from Victorian flutes. It turned out to be a last gasp of an old era, the like of which won't be seen again for some time. Or maybe ever. Now that we've been catapulted back to reality by the downturn and a penal Budget, it's hard to imagine ever returning to the madness, hype and profligate spending of the boom.

And it's not just the parties and launches, press junkets to overseas property launches - exotic or otherwise - have all but dried up too. The closest I've had to a foreign invite recently is an Austrian ski date with Cassidy Travel and Topflight at Dundrum Town Centre with ski instructors and a team of Austrian schuhplattlers or "thigh slappers" in attendance.

Scoff if you will, but beggars can't be choosers.